I like 2 kinds of card decks: Bicycle and Aviator. Occasionally, I might use a Hoyle deck. Everything else looks odd to me. Now, I’ll work with a borrowed deck that isn’t these brands, but these brands are common and no one ever suspects there’s anything wrong with them should I choose to use a gaffed card (rare). More often than not, gaffs are made using Bicycle cards (if it’s a quality trick, otherwise, it’s some generic deck). Actually, nobody ever suspects the deck when I don’t use gaffed cards, either.

Anyway, when searching the web for tricks, you may have seen a strange looking black deck with a tiger on it sold by a popular online magic site. I don’t know about you, but the deck just screams “there’s something wrong with me”. If you really think spectators look at the deck, and see you see something that seems impossible, don’t suspect the deck, you’re way off the mark. Maybe I just don’t understand the purpose of using cards like that (can someone enlighten me), but I’m in this business to show that I can create amazing bits of magic and not here so I can show off a really cool deck of cards that has special magical properties.

On the flip side, when I was younger I sold Svengali decks to kids and adults all day long, and they were some generic deck, which was even bridge size! (Real magic dudes use poker size decks, because they’re man sized – bridge is for the ladies). No one ever claimed the wouldn’t buy a deck because it didn’t match their Bicycle deck at home. No, I’m not going to tell you what a Svengali deck is or how it works…

So if you can shed some light on this as either a performer or a lay person, please do so, I’d love to hear from you.

One of the first tricks I’d ever learned. And a classic will always be a classic. Interestingly, I don’t perform it very much differently here than when I learned it, although I added somewhat of a convincer at the end, which it was lacking originally.

This is more a demonstration of skill, and it looks quiet deceptive from the angle you’re watching it. I haven’t tested it to see what angles would work best,but there’s also a telltale sound that kind of gives it away. This is a marketed trick, so I won’t likely be showing how it’s done. Sorry.

I love this trick – it’s got a max amount of magic packed into 4 cards. Yes, it does only use 4 cards, and you can use a borrowed deck – I usually run through the cards and collect them before doing the trick (I’ll show you how to set up in the explanation).

The other night, I went out to the Waterfires in Providence (Rhode Island). My brother was visiting from CA, and I was meeting some friends. Anyway, as we were standing around, this guy came up and asked us if we wanted to see a magic trick, it was “kind of like practice” was the claim.

Of course, I say “sure” and he asks if I’d like to help. What reason would I have to deny the magician a volunteer. So he did a basic card switch (swapped the card in my hand with the card in his). Someone mentioned I was a magician, and he asked if I would do a trick so I did Daley’s Last trick, but flubbed the beginning. It turned out OK, i just hate when I do that. From there, the “pro” did another trick which was actually very interesting (gaffed cards and he repeated the “effect” a couple more times than he should have, but it still was a nifty idea).

So whenever someone shows me a trick, I do tend to look at how they present it, how they do or hide their moves, sometimes even what they say (although I tend to watch more than listen, as it’s not important what a magician says). And I always tend to see if they’re performance is better or worse than mine. Now, admittedly, I’m good. When I practice, anyway. But it’s not just because I do the moves well or something, it’s because I try to understand how a move looks. If it looks too “magicky” (that’s not a real word, FYI), then I try to “dumb it down”. Unfortunately, most other magicians don’t. They look at a move as a move.

So after someone has done a trick in front of me, I do sometimes get the question “was he good, can you do better”, etc. In most cases, it’s yes. But to a normal spectator’s view, the trick may look very much the same (assuming they didn’t see both me and the other person perform the exact same trick). But, I’d like to think, that had someone watched me without prior knowledge of another magician doing the same trick, my performance seems a bit more impossible, but that feeling would be un-explainable as to why it exists.

For me, it’s not just practicing a trick, but understanding how it fits together, understanding what people see, and understanding what they’re expected to see. Without those 3 elements, then you’re just learning a trick.

EDIT: I remember he also did another “classic” called the Ambitious Card where the card continually jumps from the middle of the deck to the top. Interestingly, he did the 1st version of this routine I was taught. I’ve tried to manipulate and tweak the version I use, but I don’t always use it because I do find it gets repetitive. One good purpose of the routine is to give away the signed card to the spectator, who will then always remember you from that card (and, yes, the magician gave his business card to one of the guys there who had kids, because he does shows professionally for money).

At the end of some tricks, there is something called a “Kicker” ended. Essentially what that means is that the trick has a basic ending (magician finds the card in some amazing way), but then the “kicker” is that the car has a different color back than the rest of the deck. The problem is that sometimes, either the kicker completely overshadows the basic ending (which is great in its own right), or the kicker is timed poorly and doesn’t get noticed after doing the basic ending, when some people think the trick is done.

As another thing I do when choosing tricks I like and want to perform, I tend to stay away from “kicker” endings, unless it actually makes sense in the trick, and even then, it’s not necessarily an extra part of the trick, but is integrated as part of the trick and so flows much better. Maybe I just like tricks that have a decent flow to them. As of this writing, I don’t have any specific examples, but check out some of the videos I’ve posted to see how well the flow works for me.